Finished with the issue

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THE Australian’s Paul Kelly has decided not to participate in a debate with historian Robert Manne on his essay, Bad News, which focuses on the newspaper and its role in Australian life.

The cancellation of his appearance follows a response by Kelly to Manne’s essay published in The Australian last Thursday.

Last night [Editor of The Australian, Chris] Mitchell told Diary: “The Australian has finished with the issue.’’

The Australian devoted eight thousand words to Manne’s essay on the weekend, in addition to Kelly’s spray on Thursday, but now it’s done? Forgive me if I think that this looks like the Oz is leaving the field because they’ve realised that their effort to date has done nothing more than provide further examples of the type of behaviour that Manne criticised.

If I were advising the Dowler family I would say: The price for this outrage is up to you, but I suggest US$5Billion. Hold the line. We’ll take them to Court and drag their sad and disgusting arses through the muck so much that the Murdoch empire will collapse and they really won’t be able to do any more harm to anyone ever again.

It will be worth it if you don’t get a cent but you stop this cancer from further destroying our civic life.

As an aside, I noticed a story from the UK today about Rupert’s little mate Dave Cameron wanting to destroy “no win no fee” solicitors from acting for people like the Dowlers.

SHV, I notice the one outlet that can be trusted on coverage on the News Ltd cesspit, The Guardian, suggests that the issue is still in negotiation. I hope the Dowlers hold them to account, and the queue of litigants keeps increasing. It remains to be seen whether the politicians of Britain, Australia and the US have the collective moral fibre to do something realistic about the corruption that is News Ltd. Somehow, I think that they will squib it. Certainly, things are looking less than encouraging here.

“ON Saturday, The Weekend Australian published six articles, a blog, a cartoon and an editorial attacking my Quarterly Essay, Bad News. In total this amounted to about 12,000 words. The articles contained literally dozens of errors of fact and interpretation. I wish readers of The Australian to be aware that when I requested a right of reply it was refused.”

It was accompanied with an “Editor’s Reply” that ran along the lines of too bad, so sad and ended with this corker:

“Any substantive corrections will appear on The Australian’s website.”

That does smack a bit of cowardice. Manne is willing to defend his thesis in a public forum. Paul Kelly (and I don’t know how much influence Chris Mitchell does actually have on the issue) is content to fire off from his ivory tower and shut the balcony doors to dissenting voices. I’m never one to claim that public debate is the argument sealer (for example, Monkton is a quite good debater in rhetorical terms), but it smacks of rejecting scrutiny and denying evidence…

It seems that after Robert Manne deconstructed Paul Kellys article with surgical precision, showing him up to be a complete buffoon, this withdrawel suggests The Australian and Paul Kelly just couldn’t face a debate where they would be slowly and convincingly fisted over an extended period of time (sorry for that image). Like many modern day bullies, the eagerness to stand by their behaviour quickly evaporates when forced to do it face to face.

In print falsehoods can be marshalled to bolster a point but face to face B/S can be called to stop a lie being furthered. Given this basic vulnerability in defending the indefensible I’m only surprised Polonius agreed in the first instance.
To withdraw later is proof positive of a fatuous position.

But let me something straight … does this mean that the editor(s) at the australian actually DO dictate a company line of certain issues? To the point of actually saying ‘no, nobody’s going to talk about what that critic said about us any more’?